More news Bits

Hitchen's Article on the Timing of the Gazan War
Bad Timing
Another interesting article from Mr. Hitchens. This one considers the need of Kadima to be hawkish in order to defeat Likud and Nettanyahu in upcomming elections. Hitchen's also considers palestinian elections, and that Hamas needed to do something to prevent any weakening of their own position to Fatah. Hitchen's also laments the fact that this may all have also been timed with the US elections, with Israel recognizing that now is the best time to do anything, when there is a lame duck president. Many people had speculated that Israel would do 'something' in this time, though I'd've thought that if anything it'd be a strike on Iran.

That blog posting pointed me over to this NYT op-ed piece:
Why Israel Feels Threatened
I think that the most interesting thing from this article is the idea that Israel in the past was successful, it could defeat arab armies that were trying to invade it. And for all the fighting, it did seem to result in treaties with Egypt and Jordan. But today, it hasn't find a way to successfully deal with guerilla and irregular groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. I do also notice that the author states that the war started with Hamas 'ending' the ceasefire, and then Israel attacking. This leaves out the fact that Hamas ended the ceasefire by attacking Israel with rockets and killing schoolchildren. I don't know if it was an omission with a good purpose, but I doubt it was 'sloppy reporting' like on the news, where the talking heads are just reading a prompter anyway.

Another interesting article, from Abu Aardvark
Alhurra
The thing that caught my interest about this article, besides being written by the well informed and intelligent Abu Aardvark, is that its about Alhurra, which, after its inception, I really hadn't heard much about at all. Apparently the station has become expensive and irrelevant.